Thursday, July 7, 2011

Magnetising the Razorwing

Those of you that know me and have seen my previous 40k armies probably also know that I tend to go a bit magnet crazy at times. My Eldar have 5 Grav Tank hulls that can be changed freely between Wave Serpents and Falcons, as well as all the weapons being switchable. My World Eaters weren’t as extreme, but there was a Predator that could take any combination of weapons or drop back to being a Rhino.

This leads me to my current project, the Dark Eldar. Now, there’s not much to do to the Raiders and Venoms apart from magnetising the flying stands, so I looked instead at the Razorwing. It’s got four missiles, each of which can be one of three types. They are also one-use-only, so it makes sense to have them come off as you fire them. It’s also not quite as clear as with the Raiders, Ravagers or Venoms which weapon configuration is the best, so I decided to make them swappable too.

Here’s a step by step guide of what I did, along with photos of each stage that I took during the process. The magnets I used were just ones we had sitting around at home (3mm diameter and 1mm deep). I hope the guide is interesting and helpful to some.

Missiles

These were probably the easiest parts to do. The first step is to put magnets in the underside of the body. For the raised supports, I needed to cut away a place for the magnet to sit using a craft knife.

For the other two supports, it was much easier, as I just drilled a hole and stuck the magnet in.


The magnets I was using were too big to use on the missiles as well, so I decided to use paperclips instead. The missiles come in two halves, so I drilled a slit in the top half of each missile and inserted a small length of paperclip. This step would be a lot easier if you choose magnets that are small enough to drill and insert into the missiles, but I made do with what I had.


From there, it’s just a matter of repeating for all of the missiles. You eventually wind up with something like this

Success!

Dark Lances/Disintegrators

Once again, I ran into the problem of my magnets being too big, so I decided to do these the old-fashioned way without using any magnetic witchcraft. I first drilled a hole in the back of each of the guns and glued in a long bit of paperclip


I then needed something to slot the guns into, so I cannibalised a piece of sprue and drilled holes in the parts I cut out. I can’t really describe this, so here’s a photo that should be sufficient.

Its a part where three bits join and there's a circle on top too ;)

I stuck two of these bits to the back of the normal weapon mount, making sure the drill holes were aligned. This gives a nice long hole to hold in the weapon, and the ugliness of the sprue pieces is hidden on the inside of the model


Nose Guns

The first step here was making a magnet mount to go on the body. I took the mount for the splinter rifles and carved out the middle bit to make a nice magnet-shaped alcove.


Next, I took each of the guns and used some green stuff to increase the size of the mount so that it matched the size of the alcove created in the previous step. Magnets were then stuck to the guns and to the mount, which was then glued to the main body


Sadly, Blaise has me beat in the hand-sexiness department too

Gun mount

The nose guns can be swapped out easily now.

Splinter Rifles


Splinter Cannon

And that’s all it took to make the Razorwing fully customisable. It was only a couple of nights work over the weekend, but now it means I don’t need to figure out if I want Dark Lances or Disintegrators before I start painting, and likewise for the Splinter Cannon/Rifles at the front.

7 comments:

  1. This is awesome. Is there any way you could do something like this for your wave serpent/falcon magnetising.. or know of tutorial anywhere?

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  2. I was so excited to put mine together that I made a couple of quick calls:

    - With so many splinter cannons elsewhere, I didn't need to make it 10 points more.

    - the difference between s6/wound on 2's/s7 with a reroll was similar enough at my intended targets that I would never bother to pay for upgrades to 1shot wonders.

    - Disintergrators are poo when you factor in how much cover is kicking around in NZ

    Then I went ahead and glued it all in place. Hope I don't change my mind and suffer for my lazyness :P!

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  3. i would have thought the higher volume of shots that deny FnP/force cover saves would be worthwhile since it synergizes better w/ the volume of anti-infantry goodness that those missiles provide.

    raiders w/DL, heat lances, and blasters for anti-tank, and then splinter weapons, and Razorwings w/ disintegrators and missiles for anti-infantry

    or am i way behind the learning curve as usual?

    Wes

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  4. That was what I wasn't sure on initially Wes, but having played a game now I think it's going to be best used as a one-use missile platform and then as a ravager with only 2 DL's from then on

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  5. i think it would depend on the rest of the army composition. If you've got a handful of Venoms, then there's no need for more vehicle based anti-infantry, etc.

    my only concern is why split functionality (anti-infantry/anti-vehicle) when the ravager is abotu the same price and better at anti-vehicle and the venom is cheap as chips and good at anti-infantry?

    ok, obviously the model looks like evil, kinky sex sculpted out of nightmares and plastic, so there's always that, but from a purely functional point of view i think the missiles encourages the anti-infantry build.

    of course, if there's a void raven bomber kit released then you could pair them as specialists...

    Wes

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  6. Yup, it's just the model. It's fantastic and I want to paint and use it, which means you give up a Ravager to take it, so the DLs allow you to recover some of the lost anti tank.

    Like you say, the Venoms are better anti-infantry, and also don't compete for a heavy slot, so that makes anti-infantry configuration less desirable.

    But hey, I could be wrong, and in that case I can just switch the weapons ;)

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  7. It's way too expensive to make it anti-infantry. If you need anti-infantry in the list, you don't pick it up here, where for the same points you could grab 2 and a half venoms which is 30 shots from 36inches away.

    Furthermore, you sacrifice a ravager to take it. The only reason you would take this, outside of the fact that the model is amazing, is to force your opponent to spread more than he is comfortable by having the threat of 4 t1 blasts, and from then on you play it as a 2 shot ravager.

    A single venom kills 1.33 marines a turn, a razorwing kitted out with disintegrators and splinter cannon kills 1.99 (because they're always going to get cover if they want it) - but the points difference is something like 65 vs 155 or 150? Not sure about you, but I'm not about to pay 90 points for .66 of a marine per turn and a few very situational blast markers, and in the process lose my ability to carry troops, lose my 5+ invulnerable save, and be so high I almost never get cover.

    ReplyDelete